36] The objection
that nuns occupied the monastery at that moment was easily overcome by
removing the sisterhood to the small monastery attached to the church of
S. John in Trullo (Achmed Pasha Mesjedi) in the immediate vicinity,[237]
and for 138 years thereafter the throne of seventeen patriarchs of
Constantinople stood in the church of the Pammakaristos, with the
adjoining monastery as their official residence.[238]

As the chief sanctuary of the Greek community, the building was
maintained, it would appear, in good order and displayed considerable
beauty. 'Even at night,' to quote extravagant praise, 'when no lamp was
burning, it shone like the sun.' But even sober European visitors in the
sixteenth century agree in describing the interior of the church as
resplendent with eikons and imperial portraits. It was also rich in
relics, some of them brought by Gennadius from the church of the Holy
Apostles and from other sanctuaries lost to the Greeks. Among the
interesting objects shown to visitors was a small rude sarcophagus
inscribed with the imperial eagle and the name of the Emperor Alexius
Comnenus.[239] It was so plain and rough that Schweigger speaks of it as
too mean to contain the dust of a German peasant.[240] But that any
sarcophagus professing to hold the remains of Alexius Comnenus should be
found at the Pammakaristos is certainly surprising. That emperor was
buried, according to the historian Nicetas Choniates, in the church of
S. Saviour the Philanthropist,[241] near the palace of Mangana, on the
east shore of the city. Nor could the body of a Byzantine autocrator
have been laid originally in a sarcophagus such as Breuening and
Schweigger describe. These difficulties in the way of regarding the
monument as genuine are met by the suggestion made by Mr. Siderides,
that when the church of Christ the Philanthropist was appropriated by
the Turks in connection with the building of the Seraglio, some
patriotic hand removed the remains of Alexius Comnenus from the splendid
coffin in which they were first entombed, and, placing them in what
proved a convenient receptacle, carried them for safe keeping to the
Pammakaristos. The statement that Anna Comnena, the celebrated daughter
of Alexius Comnenus, was also buried in this church rests upon the
misunderstanding of a passage in the work of M. Crusius, where, speaking
of that princess, the author says: 'Quae (Anna) anno Domini 1117 vixit;
filia Alexii Comneni Imp. cu